


I’m Not Going Anywhere

by Demiwitchwoodwalker



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Nightmares, One Shot, Seattle, Torture, also, cause I’m a sucker for it, sorta temporary character death, the City where it is always raining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28168860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demiwitchwoodwalker/pseuds/Demiwitchwoodwalker
Summary: Neil’s used to the nightmares about Baltimore, about Evermore, of Andrew getting hurt because of him, just nightmares of his father and Lola in general. But nightmares about his mom are much less common, oddly enough. Back right after her death he had them all he time, but they stopped after a while in Millport with nothing major happening. Until one night they come back full force and Neil finds himself in his dreams in an alley in Seattle, behind a gas station.
Relationships: Neil Josten & Mary Hatford, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 5
Kudos: 119





	I’m Not Going Anywhere

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for this fandom, so I’m not great at writing these characters yet. I hope they aren’t too ooc and that y’all enjoy this!

Rain poured down from the sky in sheets, soaking Neil to the bone as he stood in an alley behind a gas station in Seattle. His clothes stuck to him like a second skin, his dyed blond hair plastered to his forehead, all curls flattened, water dripped from his fingertips, the bridge of his nose, and his chin. Shivers ran up his back as rain drops rolled down his spine and everything hurt, except he couldn’t focus on that, he didn’t have the time, not when he was surrounded by the unconscious, possibly dead, bodies of five of his father’s men, not when his father himself was nearby, was wherever his mother was, with an axe and possibly a gun. Distantly he could hear yelling, but the sound of the rain was too loud and overpowering for him to be able to tell who was yelling and what they were saying. He blinked rapidly, trying to see properly, but rain continued to run into his eyes, blurring his vision, making it impossible to see if his father was visible.

Neil hadn’t seen his father in person for nearly a year, since he’d found them in Göttingen, the only people that had caught up with them were his minions like Lola, who wasn’t anywhere in sight. Of course that didn’t technically mean anything, she could be lurking up on the roof or in a dark corner just waiting for Neil to let his guard down for one second so she could strike and slice him into ribbons. Another shudder went through Neil, his shoulder throbbing painfully in response. Someone must have managed to get a good hold on it at some point during the fight that had taken place and yanked it out of its socket, or at least almost out. Either way, he could deal with that later, he needed to find his mom, needed to make sure they both got out of this alive.

Pushing himself off the wall he had momentarily allowed himself to lean against, Neil nearly slipped on the slick ground. Water was puddled everywhere, running like small streams in the cracks in the pavement, red blood mixing with the water and swirling around like small pieces of thread. Neil’s side screamed in protest, the shift in his stance pulling at the deep gash he had from a knife that he’d only narrowly avoided being stabbed by, and his legs wobbled beneath him, blood slowly trickling down his left thigh from a shallow knife wound there. _Ignore the pain, you’re fine,_ Neil snapped at himself and moved to follow after where he was sure he’d seen her disappear to.

Before he could even start walking however, Mary suddenly burst around the corner, running towards him. She grabbed hold of his arm, not even pausing in her sprint, and yanked him along after her. Her fingers dug into his arm, bruisingly tight, nails cutting into his skin. His arm felt like it was being yanked out of its socket all over again, fire spreading through his nerves across his shoulder blade and collar bone. He stumbled a few steps before managing to get a grip on himself again, speeding up so that he was running beside her instead of behind her.

They raced through back alleyways, unfamiliar by name yet nothing unusual about their appearance, turning corners seemingly at random until they burst out into a parking lot outside of a shopping mall. Brightly colored store signs glowed against the stone building, the only thing keeping the lot from being pitch black. Despite the late hour, dozens of cars were lined up in the lot, colors smudged together by the rain running into Neil’s eyes. His mother didn’t stop running when they came out of the alley, simply dragged him towards the nearest car—a dark grey truck of some sort, the brand ineligible with all the water and the lack of decent light.

It took her barely ten seconds to pick the lock on the driver’s door and she shoved Neil inside without any attempt at being gentle. The fall onto the leather seat sent a bolt of pain through his arm, and he just barely managed to not smash his face in the seat. Neil held back a flinch and quickly adjusted the way he was seated so that he was facing the wheel, trying to ignore the burning in his shoulder, the pain in his side, the blood soaked through his pant leg. 

Suddenly, between one blink of an eye and the next, he was out on the street, rain still pounding down against the glass, but the tall business buildings of Seattle nowhere in sight. He was racing across a bridge of sorts over the highway leading out of the city, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see his mother curled up in the passenger seat, one hand pressed firmly to her abdomen, where her shirt was stained a dark, terrifying red. She was trembling slightly, though Neil doubted that had to do with cold and more to do with shock and blood loss from a wound he couldn’t see.

“Faster!” she hissed and he quickly turned his eyes back to the road, pressing down on the gas pedal a bit more, definitely going above the speed limit. His focus dwindled, grew all messed up, and things blurred together, something that could very well have been blamed on the rain, except instead of staying blurred everything dissolved around him, like his surroundings were made of dandelion fuzz being swept away from the stem by the wind.

Suddenly Neil was on his knees, sand surrounding him, hands buried in it, the smell of gasoline burning in his nose, smoke entering into his lungs with every breath he took and causing rough, dry coughs to escape him, eyes narrowed to slits to avoid them drying out from the heat of the fire that blazed in the tan car just fifteen meters from him. His whole body still hurt, no new injuries added to the few he gained in Seattle but not having dealt with those in the first place, and his head swam with dehydration and exhaustion. Some part of Neil’s mind supplied the information that his mother hadn’t let them stop once besides to switch cars three times until they were at least two states away from Seattle, but it was less something he remembered and more something he just knew.

Suddenly something around him shifted again, more a violent tug than everything dissolving like the previous time, and the ground beneath him turned from sand to cold, smooth cement, covered in old stains of dark rustic brown, obviously blood spilt at least a few months previously. Neil’s breath caught in his throat at the familiar floor, and his gaze snapped up to look around the basement of his childhood home. Immediately his eyes landed on the two people in the center, just a few feet from Neil, one sitting on top of the other. The one on the floor had striking golden blond hair, curled familiarly at his ears, except instead of it being pure gold it was spattered with red, slick with it in places. Neil’s father sat on top of Andrew instead of on top of Neil like he’s supposed to, a manic glint in his ice blue eyes that were so achingly similar to Neil’s as he traced a silver knife across his face, leaving gashes on all his prominent features.

Andrew’s blood covered the floor like paint, puddled like the rain in Seattle, and there was too much of it, way too much of it, and even though Neil knew subconsciously that this wasn’t real, a scream built up in his throat, ripping itself out of him.

“Stop! Please, stop, hurt me instead, please!” Nathan looked up at Neil, his knife stopping in the middle of one of its already drawn lines, and a cold smirk settled on his face. Neil’s breath caught again and his gaze drifted from his father’s back to Andrew, Andrew who was too still, Andrew who was too pale, Andrew whose hazel eyes were glassy and empty, Andrew who was covered in blood. A sob ripped its way out of Neil’s throat, murmuring Andrew’s name over and over again as his mind screamed _your fault, your fault, all your fault._

He barely even realized it when he was shoved onto his back by a pointed leather boot and his father kneeled over him, knife and cleaver carving Neil into pieces as they had done years before. No pleas escaped his lips as felt himself be torn apart at the seams, he didn’t beg for Nathan to stop because he deserved it and there wasn’t a point anymore anyway, nothing mattered. Andrew was gone and it was all Neil’s fault and-

“Neil,” a voice, a familiar, calming voice, one that should be dead and silent if the body on the ground was real, whispered distantly, repeating the name one, two, three times before quickly switching to a different name. “Abram!”

All Neil could do was stare at the dead body in the middle of the room, not caring that he was in pain, just wanting Andrew back. The knife retraced his past scars, opening them again and spilling blood onto the floor, spreading around him in a pool of scarlet red. The cleaver cut into his throat and legs, gouging into him, tearing his skin and muscles apart. Whimpers escaped him, involuntary tears slipped down the sides of his face into his bloodsoaked hair.

“Wake up, Abram!” the voice grew louder, no longer distant, no longer just in his head. “Wake up!”

Neil‘s eyes shot open and he inhaled a sharp and unsteady breath, nearly choking on it. His gaze darted around the dorm room for a brief, panicked second before landing on Andrew, who was sitting on Neil’s bed just barely a foot away, looking at him. His eyebrows were scrunched ever so slightly together, lips pressed together a little firmer than usual, hands clenched tightly in the plain white bed sheets at his sides. Neil felt a rush of relief at the sight of him alive, okay, and breathing, and a sob built up in his throat for the first time in years.

He sat up so quickly that he nearly banged his forehead into the bottom of the top bunk, and he turned away from Andrew, leaning his elbows against his knees and pressing his hands to his face. Tears welled up in his eyes but Neil forced them back like he had the sob. It was fake, most of it, and that which wasn’t happened over four years ago, he should be over it. He was fine. He couldn’t be any-

Suddenly Andrew was in front of him, looking up at him from where he had kneeled down on the floor right in front of him. “Neil?” he said in a softer voice than usual, but Neil didn‘t know what to say, his thoughts were too jumbled and confusing and - ”Yes or no?” Andrew’s voice was quiet as he said that and Neil finally glanced up at him, trembling way more than he liked or was now used to, tears stinging his eyes as he tried to shake the images of blood and water and fire from his mind. All he managed was a small nod and Andrew placed his hand on the back of his neck like he always did when Neil was falling down into the darkness. He pulled him down far enough to lean their foreheads together, gaze intently boring into Neil’s eyes.

“You are Neil Josten, you’re at Palmetto with me and the foxes, you’re safe, your father is dead,” Andrew said, repeating softly what he said every time Neil got panicked, and slowly Neil began to calm down as the familiar words washed over him. A bit of the tension bled out of his shoulders and his breathing evened out again, the tears disappearing from his eyes. They stayed that way for a few moments, leaning their foreheads together as Neil calmed down, before Andrew stood up. He offered him his hand, a silent invitation that he didn’t need to accept.

They both knew they wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore that night, they never could after nightmares, no matter how bad or who had them, and Neil let Andrew guide him into the kitchen, where he slumped down against the counter. His gaze tiredly followed Andrew as he poured coffee grounds into the machine along with water from the sink, not bothering to measure how much he put in before he turned it on and then went to grab two mugs from the lowest shelf in the cabinet, where they kept them because reaching anything above that was a bit of a challenge. Relief continued to course through Neil as he watched Andrew move around the kitchen, finally managing to fully convince himself the dream was fake—Andrew was alive, Nathan had never laid a hand on him.

The coffee machine beeped and Andrew swiftly filled both of the mugs he had grabbed, adding an abundance of milk and sugar to his own while he left Neil’s as it was. He set the mugs down on the kitchen island and pulled one of the tall wooden chairs they had there out, sitting down while Neil remained standing, knowing he wouldn’t be able to sit still if he sat down himself, wouldn’t be able to relax. Andrew didn’t say anything, just watched him as he pulled the coffee mug closer to himself, hands wrapping around it, letting the warmth chase away the rest of the chill he still felt from the rain in his dream. They never asked each other what their dreams were about, just let the other person talk if they needed or wanted to.

“At first it was my mom…” Neil said softly after a long moment, keeping his gaze on the dark contents of his mug. Even without looking up he knew that Andrew had a slight disapproving look on his face, the look he got whenever the topic of Neil’s mother came up, no matter the context. “But… it switched and-” he broke off, something he wasn’t quite used to, “and then I was back in Baltimore, except… except he had you instead of me and-”

Andrew put his mug down and moved closer to Neil, turning his head towards him in an almost gentle way. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly and Neil stared at him, the last remnants of fear and tension from the dreams finally dissipating.

**Author's Note:**

> If any of y’all want to find me,[My Tumblr](https://writing-is-hard-af.tumblr.com/)


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